This week Shag and Rob take a look at Aquaman #42, the second issue by Cullen Bunn, Trevor McCarthy, and Guy Major, followed by “The Secret Origin of Firestorm” from The Fury of Firestorm #22 (April 1984) by Gerry and Carla Conway, Pat Broderick, Sal Trapani, Carl Gafford, and John Costanza. Plus YOUR Listener Feedback!

As always, thanks to my co-host Rob Kelly, Sea King of THE AQUAMAN SHRINE, for doing all the post-production on these episodes! Opening theme, “That Time is Now,” by Michael Kohler. Special thanks to Daniel Adams and Ashton Burge with their band The Bad Mamma Jammas for our fantastic original closing theme! This episode brought to you in part by InStockTrades.com!

5 Comments

Man, Aquaman took a nose dive quick. I’m so sorry to hear this. I have never understood taking something successful, and mixing up a winning formula just because of well…”cause”. That’s just nuts. Here’s hoping this is going somewhere, and Bunn and McCarthy take the title back toward what was proven to work after this arc. I’m with Shagg (Good Lord, did I just type that?), this sounds VERY much like Sword of Atlantis.

As for Firestorm CAL-ASSIC, this issue does have “fill-in” written all over it. But it’s not a bad idea to get new readers up to speed. Firestorm was one of DC’s top titles, and maybe the top brass felt the new readers needed a crash course. Sal Trapani was Dick Giordano’s brother-in-law (Dick was married to Sal’s sister), so he would pop in and out of both Charlton and later DC comics from time to time. He did take the Broderick right out of the art, but they are both listed as artists, which is weird, so I’m wondering if Broderick just did layouts?

I can just imagine the look on Shagg’s face when Professor Stein finally spoke to him. I imagine he’d be waiting on that for 30 years. Looking forward to the expletive tag on the Jason Momoa soundbyte episode.

Although they never outright confirmed it, I have always surmised that Ronnie’s friend was named Jefferson Jackson. Two reasons for this: one, because at least once that I recall, Ronnie called him “Jeff” for short (couldn’t tell you where, but I’m sure it happened), and you truncate a first name more typically than a last name. Second, “Jefferson” is more plausible a first name than Jackson would be. So the only thing that makes sense is that he was interchangeably referred to as Jefferson and Jackson because his name was Jefferson Jackson. (What really probably happened, however, is that Gerry Conway originally gave the character one J-initial slightly stereotypical African-American surname, forgot what it was midstream, got confused, and started referring to him with another J-initial slightly stereotypical African-American surname.)

As for the retelling of the origin story at this point, I would guess it was because Firestorm was just about to be unleashed upon the public in the Superfriends cartoon. The powers-that-be knew this and figured that a new jumping-on point was due for the series itself to coincide with what was going to be a major quantum leap in mainstream exposure for the character.

Another Jefferson/Jackson theory: possibly editorial told Gerry to change the character’s name as not to be confused with Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning. So Gerry quietly did a soft retcon. Around the same period of time, this happened with, of all characters, Captain Carrot, who was originally named Roger Rabbit, until a certain movie got green-lit by Warner Brothers, and then suddenly, the character became Rodney Rabbit, due to editorial mandate.

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